Quatre points

Welcome to the first paragraph. This is where I would have felt the need to come up with some excuse for not updating for a month, had I experienced blogger's guilt, which I did not.

In truth, there's no particular reason for the recent blogging hiatus, other than my pathological tendency to procrastinate, and perhaps the lingering doubt that anyone is actually interested in reading how similar week n was to n-1.

So then, the last four weeks, in inverse chronological order:

The weekend just gone took me to the quintessentially something (towns are always quintessentially something - "English", usually) town of Shrewsbury. It was Sarah's birthday, you see. I drove up there with Charles and Rob, but she was still out at an airshow when we arrived, so we parked in the town and had a wander about.

We drank in a pleasant pub called The Wheatsheaf, whose landlord thanked us and told us to "come again" - unlikely due to the distance, but should I ever be at a loose end in Shrewsbury again, I may just consider it.

A high point of the weekend was our discovery of a small music shop that just happened to be closing down the next day, with everything half price. Sadly, the Korg Triton synthesiser on display was the only item in the shop that wasn't half price, but I did acquire four worthy tab books (The Optimist LP, Kid A, Falling Into Infinity and Hullabaloo) for a bargainous £32.

Returning on Saturday evening, Charles and I met up with Mike and spent some time in a depressingly empty Warwick SU before giving up and heading into Earlsdon, where we found the four members of Slybob drowning their Coventry Youth Festival sorrows in alcohol and amusing tales about the poor turnout and organisation. I felt their pain.

The weekend before that, a mediocre The Stolen gig in Brigstock and precious little else. Shortly before that, an Easyworld gig in Birmingham (which followed another in Northampton). I meant to come straight home from that and write lots about my current opinions on Easyworld and their supports Atlas (thanks James) and Delays (no "The", despite the URL), but I didn't, and the moment has, erm, gone. I can summarise as "Easyworld are turning into Elton John and I don't like it" and "I quite like Atlas but I'd probably like them more if they lost the backing tape and bought the drummer a full drumkit." There, wasn't that refreshingly terse and unsubstantiated?

The remaining time comprised two more gigs with The Stolen, a few pub visits, lots of rehearsing and even some recreational programming (shock horror). And a visit to our old school's (my God, another new website!) Open Evening :-)

Useful software of the month award goes to SpamAssassin and its Win32 adaptation SAproxy. 99% of my few hundred spams a day now get auto-diverted into a folder that is routinely purged. I don't think I've had any false positives, but then I never really glance at the thousands of messages flying past as I hold down the delete key, so who knows.

That concludes the results of the Belorussian telephone vote. The immediate future sees my freedom expiring, as I've been rather kindly and conveniently offered a summer programming job at my old workplace, Aqua Pacific. Money > sleep. I start on 1st August.

I feel this place could use a new colour scheme. Suggestions on a postcard, please.

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